Scientific News from 2015

Jaewoo Park
Mr. Youell
9B Science

January 21st, 2016

Space News

During the year of 2015, there was an advance of the humankind. People has invented many things, and solved many theories. In the year 2015, the major thing that was solved was the foundation of Pluto, and the foundation of water in Mars.

Figure 1: Mountain on Pluto. 

Last year in 2015, the mysteries about Pluto were finally solved. The satellite that is called New Horizon finally arrived to Pluto. It was launched on January 19, 2006, and took for 9 years. On July 13, they have taken a photo from 7,750 miles above from the surface, about the same distance from New York, to Mumbai, India.  John Holdren, the assistant to the President for science and technology of the White House office of Science and Technology agency said, “I am delighted at this latest accomplishment by NASA, another first that demonstrates once again how the United States leads the world in space.”  The research about Pluto is the latest in a long line of scientific accomplishments at NASA, including exploring the surface of Mars, and understanding the Saturn by Hubble Space Telescope. All of these researches are helping to inform the plan to send a colony to Mars in the 2030’s. New Horizon gave us some mind blowing pictures, and research from Pluto. 

One of the news that New Horizon brought was the mountains that was found in Pluto.  The mountain was covered with ice, about 3,500 meters above the surface of ice (figure 1). This mountain was formed about no more than 100 million years ago, which became one of the youngest surface that scientists have seen in the solar system.  Scientists still do not know how this mountain was formed; because Pluto cannot be heated by Tidal heating (Tidal heating is a planet getting heated by gravity of a massive planet. When the planet goes around a bigger planet, the big planet pulls the smaller planet. The smaller planet becomes more like an oval shape toward the bigger planet. When it becomes oval, the friction makes an volcanic eruption.)

Pluto’s moon, Charon is the largest moon that Pluto has. It is 390 kilometers, and has visible craters.  Charon will show up 7 times larger than moon if you see it on Pluto, but it will be 5 times dimmer than our moon, because Charon is 3 billion miles away from sun.  New Horizon has seen a complete Pluto day, which is 6 days and 10 hours to see the movement of the moon Charon.

Figure 2: water used to flow on this slope.

In the Year 2015, NASA has also found water on Mars.  Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, Scientists has detected the path that water has passed ago in the Red Planet, Mars.  The darkish streaks on a slope have shown that water has flow over time (figure 2). The water has flown during warm seasons, and fades away in cold seasons.  Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta said, “We found the hydrated salts only when the seasonal features were widest, which suggests that either the dark streaks themselves or a process that forms them is the source of the hydration. In  either case, the detection of hydrated salts on these slopes means that water plays a vital role in the formation of these streaks.” 

The spectrometer observations show evidence of hydrated salts at many locations, but it was found when the dark area of the slope was wide.  Scientists explained the ghostly figures as caused by hydrated minerals called perchlorates.  On Earth, perchlorates are produced on deserts, and some types of perchlorates are used as rocket propellant. The good thing is that perchlorates has seen on Mars. NASA’s Phoenix lander, and Curiosity rover both found them in Mar’s soil. However, this study has found perchlorates, now in hydrated form, in different areas than land. 

The new findings about the mysterious lines he saw in Martian slope (Name of a crater) five years ago is supporting the present day water in Mars.  “It took multiple spacecraft over several years to solve this mystery, and now we know there is liquid water on the surface of this cold, desert planet’” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.
This made the scientists to solve many mysteries about mars, and find a new way to colonize Mars. People have worried that the scientists are not sure if there are water on mars, but from this foundation, people are now sure that there are water on Mars. Many people have volunteered to travel to Mars and to live there, also it made that the colony will depend not only the supplies from Earth, but the colony will also depend on the resources that they have on Mars.  That made people to live longer while they are in that Red Planet, and research more in depth about it, so that People can live in Mars in the future. 

Figure 3:Kepler-452b and Earth. It is 60% larger.

On July 23, 2015, Kepler has found that there is an Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone around Sun like star. This star is about 1400 light years away in the constellation Cygnus. This planet is named Kepler-452b. This planet contains liquid water on the surface with G2 like star, which G2 star is Sun like star. Kepler-452b has 60 percent larger diameter than Earth, which considered a super-Earth-sized planet.(Figure 3) Sadly its mass and composition are not determined yet, but it has a high chance that Kepler-452b has a rocky surface.

                It is great that this planet has been found, but this planet’s discovery will not help to solve most of the Earth’s evolution. Although, this planet can be compared with Earth, and hypothesize that there might be a living organism in that planet.

                Kepler-452b also has longer orbit than Earth. It orbits 385 days, which is 5 percent longer. Kepler-452b is 5 percent farther than Kepler-452, the parent star of Kepler-452b. Kepler-452 is 1.5 billion years older than Earth. Sun and Kepler-452 have the same temperature, but it is 20 percent brighter, and has 10 percent larger diameter than the Sun. “We can think of Kepler-452 as an older, bigger cousin to Earth, providing an opportunity to understand and reflect upon Earth’s evolving environment.”(Jon Jenkins). Some other scientists say that there might be a existing life on that planet, because of its similarity with Earth.